


Easy Pickings

by melannen



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 20:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3396035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You had dimensional portals and alien monsters," Newt told the kid, "Where else would we be?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easy Pickings

"They couldn't even manage ten years?" Newton Geizsler exclaimed, examining the still all-too-familiar destruction around him. This city had been the gemstone of the Pan-Pacific Construction Corps' post- kaiju rebuilding efforts. They'd salvaged what they could of two mostly ruined cities hunkering on poisoned ground and overlooking lifeless, debris-choked bays, and they'd moved what was left and combined them together to rebuild one new combined city out of the best of the old. It was supposed to be a shining symbol of the new era of peace, hope, growth, and transnational cooperation.

It had almost worked, too. Better than anyone - least of all Newt - had expected. And then this.

"Seriously," he added. "A giant alien monster coming out of a portal and fighting a team of robots and destroying half of downtown? They expect us to buy that?"

"I understood most eyewitnesses were claiming the portal emerged from the monster, rather than the reverse," Hermann said without looking away from the debris patterns he was examining.

"Don't be a pedant, Hermie," Newt said.

He did look up at that. "Aren't you supposed to be looking for kaiju-spawn, Dr. Geiszler?" he said with a grimace.

Technically they were both supposed to be looking for kaiju-spawn. The local authorities were being extremely cagey about exactly how and why a Breach had formed over their business district's new showpiece, and had politely declined the PPCC's offer to send a dimensional maths expert; they'd also claimed the giant monster itself had been sucked back into its own portal and there was no point in the PPCC sending anyone to study it.

This was, of course, utterly transparent bullshit. They knew something they weren't sharing. Yay for peace hope and new eras of shining cooperation.

However, one of the team who'd appeared out of the city to fight the creature and then faded back into the streets had apparently been some sort of green, three-eyed alien who breathed fire. The ongoing public fear of someone back-engineering kaiju tissue, Jurassic-Park style, had been enough that they'd had to accept Newt's offer to investigate as a k-bio specialist.

He had his own suspicions about the "kaiju-spawn" monster given its uncanny resemblance to the monster in an ancient comic book, one that Hermann had been accusing him of rotting his brain with just last month. But it had given him an excuse to come out, and to insist on bringing Hermann as the 'partner' who was essential to his mental stability - even after a decade people still treated the last few drift pilots with a sort of mystical awe.

Hermann could probably figure out more about the portal in two days of looking at the destruction it left behind than the local government scientists could tell in two years, even with all the evidence they'd already carted off. Newt just had to putz around long enough to let him do it.

"Fine," he declared loudly. "I'm going off to look for kaiju. Lalala, I wonder if there are any kaiju here," he added, stomping off like he was pretending to be a small kaiju himself.

Actually there _were_ some kind-of-intriguing slime residues, even if they looked more synthetic than biological. He swerved around a large chunk of debris to investigate a particularly promising puddle of goo, and then stepped on something slick, fell, and barked his shins on a block of crumbling concrete.

"Ow! Fuck!" he shouted and then tried to lever himself to his feet without skinning up his hands anymore. Sometimes, these days, he felt almost as creaky as Hermann. "Fucking hell."

"Hello, I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion," someone said. "I heard a sound of distress. What seems to be the trouble?"

Newt slowly turned his head. Trundling around another piece of debris was - well, it definitely wasn't a kaiju, unless the Ghostbusters movie had been more accurate than anyone guessed. It must have been an inflatable robot - it had a fairly standard 'basic emoting' facial design - but it looked like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

"That wasn't a sound of distress, Baymax. That was fucking cussing that I'm probably still too young to hear." A kid followed the robot around the corner - dark haired, scruffy, backpack, maybe twelve years years old if you were being generous.

"A sound of distress need not be polite," the robot told him gently. "In fact the endorphin release associated with engaging in language considered taboo can be an effective source of minor pain relief."

"I'll remember that the next time Aunt Cass gives me that look," the kid muttered.

The robot turned his considerable attention back to Newt. "The extent of your use of strong language implied considerable distress. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?" A row of not-very-smiley faces appeared on his chest as a visual aid.

"I just tripped and skinned myself, I'm fine," Newt said.

"Scanning," the robot replied. "Scan complete. You have surface-level abrasions on your knees and the palms of your hands, as well bruising developing along the anterior surface of your tibia. You also show some early signs of age related joint degeneration, and some-" the robot paused, head tilting, "neurological-"

"Yeah, I knew about the neurological stuff," Newt interrupted. "I actually have a degree in that, I probably know more than you. So who are you again?"

"I am Baymax," the robot repeated. "Please allow me to clean your wounds and coat them with an antibiotic sealant. Under these conditions risk of infection is greatly increased."

"Yeah, sure, why not," Newt said. Hermann would be happy if he could present evidence of having tended his injuries, total hypocrite that he was. "Actually, though, I was asking the kid."

"Good job, Baymax, you remembered to ask before initiating treatment," the kid said. "He's a prototype medical robot- we're testing the new build under the terrain conditions of a disaster relief situation. Didn't expect to find a patient at this point."

"Oh, is that what you're doing in a area that's under such severe security restrictions that my top-level PPCC credentials barely got me in?"

The kid's eyes widened. "Holy hell," he exclaimed. "You're Newt Geiszler!"

"Frequent use of tabooed language when not experiencing pain reduces its ability to act as an anesthetic at a later time," the robot remarked as it smoothed something gooey and admittedly soothing over the place where Newt's right knee was bleeding.

"Really?" The kid asked, momentarily distracted.

"I can show you video of an experi-"

"Later," the kid waved a hand. "You're really Newt Geiszler? Sweet tats, man! What are you doing here?"

"You had dimensional portals and alien monsters," Newt answered. "Where else would we be?"

The kid's eyes went even wider, if that was possible. "You mean Dr. Gottleib is here too? He wrote the original Jaeger control code."

"I know, he only reminds me twice a week." Newt sighed. "Don't tell me, you're a Jaeger groupie."

"Nah, Jaegers are dumb. That OS was sick though."

"'Sick' is colloquial language expressing generalized approval," the robot informed Newt as he finished his ministrations and gently patted Newt's knee.

"Pretty sure he knows that, buddy. You done here? I want to see if we can find Gottlieb."

"Are you satisfied with your care?" the robot asked Newt.

"S'fine," he said. "Wait, what do you mean, 'Jaegers are dumb? They probably saved your life!" The kid preferring Hermann to him was a minor lapse of taste (though if he only knew Hermann through his work, it was understandable: even Newt would admit the old Jaeger OS was a wicked sick piece of coding,) but he'd thought he was done with having to listen to people diss the Jaeger program in general.

The kid rolled his eyes. "Jaegers are so twentieth century, dude. Like, why the h- why would anyone bother with giant mecha when you could just build micro swarms instead?" He reached down and picked something up off the ground and tossed it to Newt, lightning-fast. "Here, catch."

Newt snatched it out of the air.

...No, actually, he totally fumbled the catch and had to go scrabbling in the dust and debris for it. It was a tiny device: just a magnetic bearing with two elongated pyramids attached that was just slightly too heavy to be solid carbon fiber.

"Huh," he said, intrigued, but by the time he looked up again, the kid and the robot had disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Interesting facts about this crossover universe:  
> 1\. Hiro and Tadashi's parents were Jaeger techs who died in the Kaiju attack on Sydney, and Hiro still has some resentment about that along the lines of "why couldn't you have saved the world a week sooner".  
> 2\. Tadashi spent the first several years of Hiro's life telling everybody about how they were going to be drift partners someday.  
> 3\. At some point Hiro will meet Raleigh and somebody will say the word "brother" and I will cry. A lot.


End file.
